Why So Shocked? You Were NEVER Meant To Keep Your Health Insurance Under #ObamaCare

It takes some time to fundamentally transform America and, while they may be wrong about a lot of thingsalmost everything, in this instance, Democrats are right about one thing: The term transition is absolutely the correct term when discussing the debacle known as ObamaCare.

You see, while they will never openly admit it (excepting, perhaps, in the darkest recesses of some corner inside the White House or the Center of American Progress), ObamaCare was never meant for Americans to “keep their health insurance plans,” it is a transition plan to drive all Americans* to single-payer (aka nationalized or socialized) health care.

On October 15, 2008, several weeks before Barack Obama’s election and well before ObamaCare was enacted, I wrote (pre-LUR and RedState) a post entitled Obama’s Plan to Socialize Health Care.

In the post, I stated, “Within five years (if not sooner), the U.S. will have full-blown socialized medicine under President Barack Obama.”

This prediction was not based on all of the regulations that were eventually put into the Affordable Care Act–those regulations that are causing millions to lose their individual coverage and another 93 million potentially to lose their employer-sponsored health plans–but was based on simple economics.

Candidate Obama’s ‘Pay or Play’ Scheme

During the 2008 campaign, then-candidate Obama boasted of his plan to build a government program to insure the uninsured.

Obama’s plan during the campaign was called a “pay or play” plan.

His plan would to force all employers to pay 100% of their employees’ health care–OR, if they didn’t, he would require those employers to pay 6% of their payroll to “opt in” to the government’s plan.

That either-or–pay 100% of employees’ insurance or pay six percent of payroll into a government plan–was the scheme to push Americans into a government plan.

From an economic standpoint, it was (and even more so now) a ‘no brainer.’ Here’s why:

Even with many American workers already contributing a percentage to their health care premiums, most employers providing health insurance were already paying 10%, 20% or even higher percentage of their payrolls toward health insurance–and annual cost increases were often in the double digits.

Imagine, then, an employer in a highly-competitive industry (like the grocery industry, for example) paying 18% of its payroll toward employee benefits (even with employee contributions) and, suddenly, Big Brother offers a plan that costs the employer a mere six percent of payroll. What employer wouldn’t jump on that?

Moreover, in a highly competitive industry, once one employer dumps its employees onto the government plan, its competitors will either have to do the same, or lose market share and potentially go out of business.

Like the falling of dominoes, within a few short years everyone would be on the government’s plan.

“…[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it…”

Fast forward to 2010 and the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare).

Since Democrats had to pass it before they could read it, no one really knew (except the Obama Administration, apparently) that there would be grandfather clauses that would expire forcing tens of millions to have their insurance plans cancelled.

However, that wouldn’t have really mattered in the long run since the “pay or play” system in the Obama’s original plan was actually modified to be lower than the six percent Obama proposed during the campaign.

The $2000 fine (or in certain cases $3000) fines that employers will have to pay for not providing insurance to their employees is even more of an incentive for employers to dump on the government plan–now called (in typical Orwellian fashion) “exchanges.”

That union bosses charged with representing members and their “union benefits”–like the United Food & Commercial Workers and the Teamsters, both of which faces intense competition from non-union grocers and trucking companies (respectively)–sold their members (as we did in the late 80s and early 90s) on supporting and even protesting in support of ObamaCare is nothing less than a dereliction of their duties as representatives.

Unless, of course, they too were misleading their members which, frankly, appears to be the case as the AFL-CIO recently resolved again to see the end-goal of single payer enacted.

Shortly after ObamaCare’s passage, the CEO of a company told me that the company’s financial gurus had already calculated the savings that dumping employees onto the exchanges would mean to his the company.

With several thousand employees, many of whom voted for Obama, the savings for his company would be in the millions.

Despite the questions and, now, the delays, that have surrounded ObamaCare’s enactment, calculating the amount of money companies will save by dumping their employees onto the government “exchanges” and paying the fines has likely already been done by hundreds of thousands of businesses across America.

Why So Shocked?

While Barack Obama is many things, one thing he is not: He is not stupid (or so we’re led to believe).

In fact, given his intentional deception of the American people, it appears that Obama may be smarter than most give him credit for.

By all the recent revelations over these past few weeks, it appears that the writers of ObamaCare did not want to leave any stoned unturned, nor did they want to wait for the in pushing employers to dump

It is no mistake, nor accident, that ObamaCare is causing Americans lose their insurance. It was designed to have employers push their employees onto a government plan.

The fact that the Administration knew this as far back as 2010 is not at all surprising.

The question is: Why are so many Americans shocked that they are now losing their insurance? That was the plan all along.

Just beginning…

ObamaCare is nothing more than a ‘transition’ plan to single-payer (or socialized or nationalized or universal health care or whatever you want to call it). The simple economics of it are what makes it attractive for employers to leave the private insurance market, the newly-understood regulations are just the icing on the cake.

The Administration knew it all along. The problem is, for most Americans who are now (and will be) losing their insurance, you didn’t.

* By stating “all Americans” in the paragraph above, it should be noted that government officials will still be exempted from the law they enacted.